12.28.11

Summary: A roundup of Gates stories and what they teach us about the Gates Foundation

THE WORLD’S top lobbyist might in fact be Bill Gates, who operates under the umbrella of a foundation. He does not run a company per se, but he is making money in other ways without having to pay tax.

The Korean president is visiting him like he is a political figure (which he is, but the public never elected him), leaving the president susceptible to lobbying for patents and for power. As the Korean press put it a few months ago:

President Lee Myung-bak returned home Saturday from a trip to New York and Seattle that included speeches at the U.N. General Assembly and a high-level nuclear safety meeting, bilateral summits and a meeting with Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

And as Gates Keepers put it: “One wonders what Le Myung-bak’s electoral constituents think of him taking ‘global advice’ from a nonKorean college drop out code developer?”

This is “all irrelevant and say nothing,” claims Toby, “what he is, fundamentally, is a criminal sociopath.” Well, behind the scenes he is bullying employees, acts impolitely, and using the F word. Here is another example of it:

BE: I’d have to say they are Planners, top down. And it surprises me because Bill Gates is an entrepreneurial businessman and they tend to be Searchers. The one and only time I met Gates was at Davos several years ago. I figured he’d be friendly to my ideas but he seemed quite hostile. He came up to me and said, “What’s all this searching crap?” (chuckles)

It it is not Bill’s idea, then it is “crap”. This is how and why we see monopolisation in health science, for example. And for those who think that he is giving away his wealth (that’s the PR nonsense), here is a new reminder:

And best of all, he does not pay tax because he is, one would believe, “giving away” money. The above article is very silly by the way and it confused correlation and causation” as Gates Keepers explains. Mr. Gates and his minions keep seeking celebrity endorsements for their campaigns (we provided many examples in the past). This PR effort recently hit a jackpot:

Moonshots and Mandela. Can’t lose with those images. Here is a talking head of Melinda from the Social Good Summit where hundreds of people were put in a room to listen to people talk about how good their programmes were. The audience was expected to tweet about it – manufactured consent for the networked generation.

In summary, the PR operation works. Bill Gates gets richer, the press says he is giving away, and he continues to receive access to the ears of world leaders, to whom he pushes an agenda for his investment. What a cruel trap. The media keeps playing along:

Another example can be found in the ongoing Education Nation series sponsored on a number of platforms by NBC. It’s endorsement of market-driven anti-public education policies are evident in its parading of the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates and their utterly anti-public, charter school, privatized and technocratic vision of education.

Where has the watchdog media gone? Need we rely on blogs for a sobering perspective? NBC should be recalled in the context of MSNBC, where MS is Microsoft. █

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3 Comments

In any case, I think the laws that allow MS, Gates, Apple, and Google (and many others) to do this are completely messed up. I agree they are wrong – but I do not blame those who use the laws, I blame those who make the laws. Then again, those who makes the laws are paid by many of those who evade taxes… hence the reason the laws exist.

Money is not free speech… if it was, bribing judges and juries would be legal.

Microsoft's charm offensives against Free/libre software are proving to be rather effective, despite them involving a gross distortion of facts and exploitation of corruptible elements in the corporate media

A British MEP criticises Battistelli and the management of the European Patent Office (EPO) while Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, UK Minister for Intellectual Property, gets closer to Battistelli in a tactless effort to improve relations